You won’t be adding an aftermarket SSD to your new iMac

A custom connector means a factory SSD, or none at all.

Following our post about Japanese Mac site Kodawarisan's teardown of the newly redesigned 21.5-inch iMac, we (and commenters) were left with several questions. Chief among them was whether or not the new iMac would allow the installation of a third-party solid state disk. In its base $1,299 configuration, the 21.5-inch iMac comes with no SSD and no build-to-order storage add-ons; even the $1,499 model only has the option to add a 128GB SSD as part of Fusion Drive, which marries the SSD to the system's 1TB spinning hard disk drive to create a single volume. No SSD-only option exists, nor is there a way to add a standalone SSD.

Computer-savvy DIY fans had hoped to continue doing what they've been doing with iMacs for years by finding a place to mount their own SSDs somewhere inside the case, but it looks like this won't be happening. iFixit has posted its own thorough iMac teardown, and this set of pictures sits at the bottom of the third page:

Detail of traces for the proprietary SSD connector (left), with a retina 13-inch MacBook Pro's stick-style SSD placed atop (right). The connector itself is absent in the base 21.5-inch iMac.

At left is the position on the logic board that apparently would be occupied by the (likely Samsung 830-powered) Apple SSD. There are traces showing on the logic board that line up with an SSD plucked from a retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, as shown at right. However, the connector to actually plug in the SSD is missing. It seems that the connector isn't even added at the factory for the base model.

Further, a scouring of the logic board reveals no spare SATA ports anywhere. The SATA connector used for the iMac's 2.5-inch hard disk drive appears to be the only one present inside the computer.

There's another practical issue as well. The display and back shell of the iMac are held together by a strong adhesive; separating the display from the shell and opening the iMac is somewhat straightforward, but actually replacing the display after you've poked about in the thing's insides is a little more complex, necessitating a re-glueing (or an application of some carefully cut double-sided sticky foam). Clearly, this new iMac is the least DIY-friendly Mac yet. It reminds us a little bit of Andy Herztfeld's telling of the old story of Steve Jobs and the Mac expansion port; though Jobs has passed, his no-tinkering legacy still remains strong with Apple's flagship desktop.

191 Reader Comments

How many iMac users ever upgrade any portion of their unit at all? I'm guessing that among that particular purchasing segment even something as easy as an end user RAM upgrade is practically unheard of.

It seems to me that if you're really worried about updatability or expansion capability you'd be avoiding iMacs (and apple products in general) all together.

edit: answered my own question. Yes, although it's using SODIMM, so you probably can take them only to 16 gigs (which, admittedly, should be plenty for a good long while yet), and the 21-inch model looks like it will require disassembly of the case to get to the slots. Apparently, Anandtech says that the 27-inchers have a dedicated door to get at the RAM.

With Thunderbolt ports it's unnecessary to tear your iMac apart. You can easily host a complete boot partition with full Mac OS X environment on a faster SSD (even a RAID 0 array) on an external Thunderbolt drive - it's more than fast enough. Thunderbolt enclosures are expensive now but the price will come down so if you're willing to live with an external drive, your expansion options are open. Since you can host full-speed PCI-e over Thunderbolt, you can support expansion cards in an external chassis. There are high-end products that do this now. As someone who has opened their 2007 iMac to install an SSD, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a new iMac - the lack of expansion is not a problem nor surprise.

With Thunderbolt ports it's unnecessary to tear your iMac apart. You can easily host a complete boot partition with full Mac OS X environment on a faster SSD (even a RAID 0 array) on an external Thunderbolt drive - it's more than fast enough. Thunderbolt enclosures are expensive now but the price will come down so if you're willing to live with an external drive, your expansion options are open. Since you can host full-speed PCI-e over Thunderbolt, you can support expansion cards in an external chassis. There are high-end products that do this now. As someone who has opened their 2007 iMac to install an SSD, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a new iMac - the lack of expansion is not a problem nor surprise.

Setup like that reminds me of my old IIGS - no internal hard drive, applications run from external disks.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me recommend any technically-adept friends away from Apple. I've never seen a company so anti-enthusiate. The Alienware m14x R2 I recently bought has tonnes of replaceable parts and overclocking options in the bios. If you like to work on your computers there are a lot of good options, but not made by Apple.

Ahh the cognitive dissonance of the Mac fan 'It looks like a nasty, proprietary, customer hostile move but this is Apple, it must be innovation!'. This reminds me of the time Apple BIOS locked their users into only buying Apple RAM at a hefty premium over anyone else's price.

In all honesty the difficulty in prying open modern ultra-slim designs means this was always an option only for the more tech-savvy users but still it's a nasty cheap move Apple.

Okay, maybe it's because I've long since lost interest in tweaking the guts of my own rigs these days, but why do people cry about this? You just take one look at the outside of the new iMac and it's blindingly obvious that it isn't meant to be an pop-open and upgrade machine.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me recommend any technically-adept friends away from Apple. I've never seen a company so anti-enthusiate. The Alienware m14x R2 I recently bought has tonnes of replaceable parts and overclocking options in the bios. If you like to work on your computers there are a lot of good options, but not made by Apple.

Add this to the heat gun glue, and I think a Thunderbolt chassis sounds like a very good idea.

dsleif wrote:

Excuse my ignorance, as I haven't rooted around in any Mac cases - but could you get one with a spinning disk, and just replace that with an SSD?

Sort of, or depends. Yes you can replace it, but the 2011 model relies on the heat sensor in the drive and relies on a custom firmware in HDD to send this data over a couple of unused pins in the power connector. Without this data, that fan ran at top speed. The late 2009 and 2010 models also used the internal sensor, but used a separate cable, so you could replace the drive with a generic identical model (ie, Seagate with Seagate) or just jumper off that connection so the fan stays at base speed in all cases.

What happens in the 2012 remains to be seen. As there is only one fan, it may be that they stopped bothering with the internal HDD sensor.

Okay, maybe it's because I've long since lost interest in tweaking the guts of my own rigs these days, but why do people cry about this? You just take one look at the outside of the new iMac and it's blindingly obvious that it isn't meant to be an pop-open and upgrade machine.

If that's a problem for you, don't bloody buy one.

Some people just love to tweak. It's an enthusiast thing... Gotta tweak em all!

Honestly, I don't understand why people wouldn't have any interest in it. It's a great learning experience and, for me at least, you feel a bit more proud of the piece of equipment you put a little of yourself into.

No homo.

Edit: I don't understand the downvotes, I had Arsians pegged as the take-apart-the-remote kind of kids. Could someone enlighten me?

Add this to the heat gun glue, and I think a Thunderbolt chassis sounds like a very good idea.

dsleif wrote:

Excuse my ignorance, as I haven't rooted around in any Mac cases - but could you get one with a spinning disk, and just replace that with an SSD?

Sort of, or depends. Yes you can replace it, but the 2011 model relies on the heat sensor in the drive and relies on a custom firmware in HDD to send this data over a couple of unused pins in the power connector. Without this data, that fan ran at top speed. The late 2009 and 2010 models also used the internal sensor, but used a separate cable, so you could replace the drive with a generic identical model (ie, Seagate with Seagate) or just jumper off that connection so the fan stays at base speed in all cases.

What happens in the 2012 remains to be seen. As there is only one fan, it may be that they stopped bothering with the internal HDD sensor.

Yeesh, sounds like a nightmare... something to be said for using standards here.

I would go a step further and add that Apple products are also for people who don't like their wallets.

Maybe they're computers for people who want 1) a machine that works well, 2) pleasing design aesthetics, 3) have the money to spare and 4) don't care about cocking around in the insides.

No, Apple doesn't make enthusiast machines anymore, unless you want to count the Pro and God knows how much longer that will be around. The market isn't dominated by enthusiasts and hasn't been for many years. And Apple's customer base focus is reflecting that demographic change. Yeah, it sucks for an enthusiast who likes Macs but Apple is going to chase the majority of the market, not the minority. Niche brands like Alienware etc are where it's at for enthusiasts who want to build and tweak.

Ahh the cognitive dissonance of the Mac fan 'It looks like a nasty, proprietary, customer hostile move but this is Apple, it must be innovation!'. This reminds me of the time Apple BIOS locked their users into only buying Apple RAM at a hefty premium over anyone else's price.

That deserves to be refuted, even if it is ancient history (this was the SD-RAM era, before DDR). All RAM that followed JEDEC specifications was accepted by the updated BIOS. The issue was that a lot of the RAM on the market did not follow those specifications, which made it a bit of a dick move as someone who had updated their Macs with cheapskate RAM before the update suddenly found that the Mac wouldn't boot anymore. Any reasonable quality RAM worked well.

Okay, maybe it's because I've long since lost interest in tweaking the guts of my own rigs these days, but why do people cry about this? You just take one look at the outside of the new iMac and it's blindingly obvious that it isn't meant to be an pop-open and upgrade machine.

If that's a problem for you, don't bloody buy one.

Some people just love to tweak. It's an enthusiast thing... Gotta tweak em all!

Honestly, I don't understand why people wouldn't have any interest in it. It's a great learning experience and, for me at least, you feel a bit more proud of the piece of equipment you put a little of yourself into.

No homo.

Heh, yeah I know, I used to do it. God, I was all over that. Last machine I had before migrating to Macs was an old Velocity Micro which I poked on a regular basis. That was a while back though.

The consumer trend has moved away from that, and you can't fault businesses wanting to move with it. I understand some wanting the challenge of tweaking a machine like the iMac, and that's fine. But demanding that Apple design it for that purpose isn't, as the iMac is clearly not aimed at that market segment.

You could always view it as a great challenge to your tweaking skills to be able to successfully mod a machine that is so obviously meant not to be. Maybe we can make it an Olympic sport.

Some people just love to tweak. It's an enthusiast thing... Gotta tweak em all!

Honestly, I don't understand why people wouldn't have any interest in it. It's a great learning experience and, for me at least, you feel a bit more proud of the piece of equipment you put a little of yourself into.

No homo.

Heh, yeah I know, I used to do it. God, I was all over that. Last machine I had before migrating to Macs was an old Velocity Micro which I poked on a regular basis. That was a while back though.

The consumer trend has moved away from that, and you can't fault businesses wanting to move with it. I understand some wanting the challenge of tweaking a machine like the iMac, and that's fine. But demanding that Apple design it for that purpose isn't, as the iMac is clearly not aimed at that market segment.

You could always view it as a great challenge to your tweaking skills to be able to successfully mod a machine that is so obviously meant not to be. Maybe we can make it an Olympic sport.

Okay, maybe it's because I've long since lost interest in tweaking the guts of my own rigs these days, but why do people cry about this? You just take one look at the outside of the new iMac and it's blindingly obvious that it isn't meant to be an pop-open and upgrade machine.

If that's a problem for you, don't bloody buy one.

This type of thinking is deeply flawed.

When apple does things like this it severely hurts them in the enterprise world, and moves such as this are probably one of the reasons no one bought Xserves.

There is practically no consideration here for using the iMacs in a lab environment, and anyone who's built a workflow on the old iMacs now has an extra hurdle to jump.

And since IT can't do simple repairs or upgrades in house, that's even more cost, time, and overhead to maintain the iMacs over other machines. And it just seems spiteful to not put the sad connector on the base model.

Combined with RAM upgrades that cost WAAAYYY more than market prices for ram, and apple comes off looking like the greedy corporate entity that they used to do a good job of avoiding to look like.

Iike the thin iMacs, but the expensive ram upgrades an no ability to add an ssd to the base model would cause me never to buy this model. I just bought a new dell too that will likely be a Linux/os x dual boot, I have no intention of running windows on it.

I understand people dont upgrade their machines, but this is hard drive we are talking about, one componenet that even non enthusiasts often upgrade at some point, especially with SSD prices dropping pretty quickly.This is designed for one purpose only - artificially raise the price of Apple rebraded HDD (with custom interface), and i bet you the price will be hefty (RAM has shown us this).Whats funny is that the move is dickish, but hey, as long as people continue to buy these, why not overcharge? Vote with your wallet if you want these to stop, otherwise, dont complain. Still will be pretty funny when all these buyers want to upgrade the HDD at some point and they will be told, sorry you gotta buy the apple version (that costs at least 3.5 times as much and still has less space then the generic SSD).

Ahh the cognitive dissonance of the Mac fan 'It looks like a nasty, proprietary, customer hostile move but this is Apple, it must be innovation!'. This reminds me of the time Apple BIOS locked their users into only buying Apple RAM at a hefty premium over anyone else's price.

[citation needed]

The computer is first, and foremost a tool. If you depend on your computer for your job, your efficiency on the system, system reliability and uptime matter more than up-front cost, and you will probably be replacing it every couple years. YOU may see YOUR computer as a toy, but some people actually use them to do work. If you want something to tinker with, get something else. Most of us view having to mess with a work machine as a waste of time.

I'm dissapointed they moved to glue, the magnetic system for the old screen seemed just fine for me. I guess there was no room for magnets in that ultra-slim bezel, but if so, would 1-2 more mm have killed them to avoid the de-glue and re-glue that Geeksquad has to go through for repair?

No question, i'd be ordering one with fusion drive anyway, and with TB, I really could care less about adding internal. hell, even though I have a tower with 9x 3.5" drive bays I haven't added an internal disk in 3 years. Why? eSATA is more convenient, still supports my onboard RAID functions externally, and the drives are easier to replace or make protable in a pinch. Internal is only for convenience, and for saving a few bucks on caddies, but otherwise in my opinion, inferior.

I can understand a company not catering to tinkerers, but actively going out of its way to prevent tinkering is a dick move. And it has nothing to do with support costs - tinkerers tend to fix their own problems and spend more on high end gear in the first place. It's planned obsolescence and thinking you know best for people.

Okay, maybe it's because I've long since lost interest in tweaking the guts of my own rigs these days, but why do people cry about this? You just take one look at the outside of the new iMac and it's blindingly obvious that it isn't meant to be an pop-open and upgrade machine.

If that's a problem for you, don't bloody buy one.

This type of thinking is deeply flawed.

When apple does things like this it severely hurts them in the enterprise world, and moves such as this are probably one of the reasons no one bought Xserves.

There is practically no consideration here for using the iMacs in a lab environment, and anyone who's built a workflow on the old iMacs now has an extra hurdle to jump.

And since IT can't do simple repairs or upgrades in house, that's even more cost, time, and overhead to maintain the iMacs over other machines. And it just seems spiteful to not put the sad connector on the base model.

Combined with RAM upgrades that cost WAAAYYY more than market prices for ram, and apple comes off looking like the greedy corporate entity that they used to do a good job of avoiding to look like.

Iike the thin iMacs, but the expensive ram upgrades an no ability to add an ssd to the base model would cause me never to buy this model. I just bought a new dell too that will likely be a Linux/os x dual boot, I have no intention of running windows on it.

Why is this anti-enterprise? Enterprise virtually NEVER upgrade a system after they buy it, and if they have to, its because someone failed their job initially. The labor cost alone to touch a machine physically, for virtually any reason, especially creating downtiemfor something as simply as upgrades that with proper planning are unnecessary, is a significant cost and burden. Also, apple charges on par with what ALL OEMs charge for day-1 RAM upgrades, $200 for 16GB is not a bad price honestly, for 1600 speed sodimms, and considdering that upgrade is covered without increasing warranty pricing, so it;s not actually "waaayyyy" more expensive at all. Consumers can buy off-market RAM and slap it in cheaper, sure, but corporations have to cover labor costs and DOA management, and that's in fact, is not cheaper.

You can't ADD and SSD, (2 drives total), but you CAN swap out the drive for an SSD. What's missing is the mSATA conenctor, not the basic SATA connector. That's the EXACT SAME CONDITIONS applied to every other major market 21 and 23" AIO. The idea you could do that in the last model was a total surprise.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me recommend any technically-adept friends away from Apple. I've never seen a company so anti-enthusiate. The Alienware m14x R2 I recently bought has tonnes of replaceable parts and overclocking options in the bios. If you like to work on your computers there are a lot of good options, but not made by Apple.

They are many of us that are "technically-adept" that no longer wish to fiddle and tinker with computers. When I was younger I used to build many computers but after a certain point I realized there were more important things I wanted to do with my time. In fact, everyone I know that was like me also no longer have the interest to mess around with computers. Guess what most of them own? That's right, Macs.

Besides, with Thunderbolt one could easily upgrade and run their Mac that way. The days of opening up your computer to replace a hard drive will not be around for much longer.

With Thunderbolt ports it's unnecessary to tear your iMac apart. You can easily host a complete boot partition with full Mac OS X environment on a faster SSD (even a RAID 0 array) on an external Thunderbolt drive - it's more than fast enough.

Setup like that reminds me of my old IIGS - no internal hard drive, applications run from external disks.

Considering that hard disks were fairly uncommon for home users in 1986 (when IIgs production began), and quite expensive, that was a reasonable design decision at the time.

the IIGS was an early example of use of SCSI, but even out Mac 512ke in 1985/1986 had an external HDD, and the SE30 we got in 1989 had a 30GB internal. HDD were "uncommon" and in the IIGS days either a 10MB or 20MB was a big drive, but they were in fact common, the alternative being having at least 2 floppy drives with the system on 1 disk and your app/data on the other, and that greatly limited the performance capabilities of the IIGS, especialyl if you actually used it for graphics or sound as intended, or added an accelerator card or additional logic board. I don;t think I've ever seen a IIGS that didn't have a HDD.

This is the sort of stuff that makes me recommend any technically-adept friends away from Apple. I've never seen a company so anti-enthusiate. The Alienware m14x R2 I recently bought has tonnes of replaceable parts and overclocking options in the bios. If you like to work on your computers there are a lot of good options, but not made by Apple.

Definitely. Apple is great if you want an easy to use computer that anyone can pick up.

Apple is horrendous for people who want to tweak and upgrade. Is it any surprise that Apple changed the connector (although the actual article didn't mention it, only the subtitle)? Or made it hard to repair?

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.